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....I think thought IS physical matter or more correctly matter doing stuff
a thought is not physical
you can't touch it or see it or weigh it or put it on your table to admire
do you recognize that there is a difference between "things that are physical" and things that are very real but "non physical" (can't be touched or seen or weighed or put on your table to admire)
you Trans are very real. you are a physical body sitting at your desk. your neighbor can see you and shake your hand and take a photo of you.
the thoughts in your head are also very real. but no one can see them or touch them or take a photo of them. they are non physical.
Matter takes on very different forms, but is the same stuff at base. You can't see x -rays or gamma rays, but they do stuff with you body as effectively as lead molecules going through your respected bod. at muzzle velocity or iron molecules interacting with the cranium in the form of a crowbar.
UV and Infra read are as real as red or blue light particles, but we "Think" they are not real because our retinas are not adapted to register the information.
Water as steam cannot be caught in a net, and superheated can't even be seen, but frozen, you can break windows with it.
And of course electricity does not appear to exist when it runs along the copper thread, but touch it and it will feel real enough.
And thoughts are, or so the explanation goes, electricity, and is as real as that and as solid as particles go, as
particles that make up diamond. But considerably more precious.
MPD and Gaylen both are anti-religion and anti those who are religious. Their posts show this.
This is a lie but it is consistent with your dominant anti-MPhD and anti-Gaylen perspective.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof
Perhaps you can put your quote-mining skills to work and dig up some quotes demonstrating that I am anti-religion? (BTW: Obviously I disagree with some religions and with some beliefs of some religions. But "disagreeing with X" is not the same as "being anti-X", and being opposed to some beliefs of some religious people is not the same as being anti-religion as a whole.)
Amen!But it seems to be a distinction that she is unwilling to make.
The thing there, I think is that you are making a disticntion between Jupiter and qualia...
No, I was making a distinction between Jupiter (a physical system that is not conscious) and an animal (a physical system that is conscious).
Quote:
...because Jupiter is (logic would tell us) probably not conscious and qualia is.
No. Qualia are not conscious. People are conscious. Qualia are the elements constituting experience. Compare:
"Atoms are wet."
"No. Water is wet. Atoms are the elements constituting water."
Quote:
If qualia is a material/physical effect...
Qualia is not a physical effect. Qualitative experience is an aspect of some physical systems. Compare:
"Angle's are an effect of triangles."
"No. Having angles is an aspect of being triangular."
Quote:
...it is as non -conscious as Jupiter and our mind is looking at it.
Qualia are not "things" that we look at. Qualia constitute the process of looking. When we introspect, we try to turn the process of looking into an object that we are looking at, but due to paradoxes of self-reference, the imagination has to kick in and "give us" an "object" to fill in the "hole" at the center of the self-referential process (metaphorically, perhaps, a bit like our brain fills in the "blind spot" in our vision where our optic nerve attaches to the retina). In general, qualia are not objects of experience (since they are the process itself), but when consciousness focuses on its own process of experiencing, it experiences the subjective feelings we call qualia. When it tries to focus on other people's processes of experience, it finds brains, neuroanatomy, abstract principles of electrochemistry, self-organization, etc.
The imagination is key here. But the term "imagination," in this context, can be misleading because we generally associate it with "not real" but, in this context, imagination is precisely what constitutes what we know as "reality". The look and feel of a slab of brain tissue in a lab are just as much products of the imagination as red, or a feeling of pain. Reality can only experience itself as it experiences itself. There is nothing "more real" than what Reality experiences itself as (via the conscious process I'm loosely referring to as "imagination" for lack of a better term at the moment).
I'm probably saying some of this wrong, and will need to backtrack or elaborate to makes sense of some of it, but I'm out time and it's the best I can do at the moment.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 04-10-2018 at 06:39 AM..
Matter takes on verydifferent forms, but is the same stuff at base. You can't see x -rays or gamma rays, but they do stuff with you body as effectively as lead molecules going through your respected bod. at muzzle velocity or iron molecules interacting with the cranium in the form of a crowbar.
UV and Infra read are as real as red or blue light particles, but we "Think" they are not real because our retinas are not adapted to register the information.
Water as steam cannot be caught in a net, and superheated can't even be seen, but frozen, you can break windows with it.
And of course electricity does not appear to exist when it runs along the copper thread, but touch it and it will feel real enough.
And thoughts are, or so the explanation goes, electricity, and is as real as that and as solid as particles go, as
particles that make up diamond. But considerably more precious.
Great post. Wonderful examples. Delightful imagery.
And I agree.
Matter takes on very different forms, but is the same stuff at base
Everything is the 'same stuff at base" then.
Things you can see that have physical form (diamonds) and things that you can't see (thoughts) are each real and are made of the same stuff.
I agree. Is what I just stated consistent with what I understood your post to say?
And what would you call it or name it this "same stuff at base" ? recognizing that language is limited but at the moment it's what we have. In your own words in your own framework of understanding, what do you call it or name it or think of it as?
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 04-10-2018 at 07:22 AM..
Matter takes on very different forms, but is the same stuff at base. You can't see x -rays or gamma rays, but they do stuff with you body as effectively as lead molecules going through your respected bod. at muzzle velocity or iron molecules interacting with the cranium in the form of a crowbar.
UV and Infra read are as real as red or blue light particles, but we "Think" they are not real because our retinas are not adapted to register the information.
Water as steam cannot be caught in a net, and superheated can't even be seen, but frozen, you can break windows with it.
And of course electricity does not appear to exist when it runs along the copper thread, but touch it and it will feel real enough.
And thoughts are, or so the explanation goes, electricity, and is as real as that and as solid as particles go, as
particles that make up diamond. But considerably more precious.
you know i am a fan of your use of language, that last bit is one of my favorites (the list is getting longer though) and as evocative as poetry. Thoughts are more precious than diamonds, our thoughts are more valuable than the stuff we own, our riches are not in our bank account but in our inner being.
How is thinking different than feeling?
For you, how do you distinguish between what you are "thinking" and what you are "feeling" ?
What part of you "thinks"? or put another way, With part of your self do you "think"?
What part of you "feels"? or put another way, With what part of your self do you "feel"?
What is the difference between "thoughts" and "emotions"?
How do you tell them apart?
Is a thought "physical matter" ? If not, then what is it?
Is a feeling "physical matter" ? If not, then what is it?
The mid brain thinks instinctively, the fore brain thinks more rationally. Feelings are a product of the mid brain producing chemicals. These are then registered by the brain in a feed back loop, producing the illusion of emotions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
Can thoughts or feelings be measured, verified, proven, or validated by anyone other than you yourself?
Yes, to some degree. Not only can we measure thoughts and feelings, we can see animals react to the same stimuli, from people on a roller coaster, to birds escaping a sparrowhawk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tzaphkiel
A brain no more generates thoughts, then the paper a musical score is printed on generates the symphony.
Have you seen a thought without a brain? And why would a lobotomy, zb, alter the way people think?
There is only the 'natural universe". There is nothing else. so agnostic until proven otherwise would mean you wouldn't be here. So you believe something.
You are agnostic about the car I drive, yet you are still here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arach Angle
You may have seen my claim, a version of gaia from the 60's. That the biosphere is best described as "alive". "alive", although hard to define, seems to be an enormous amount of interactions in a fairly small volume. A cell is the smallest volume that picks up the classification of alive.
I claim, we are in a system that is best described as life and some people feel that life like a protein in you 'feels" you. That many spiritual and religious are just misunderstanding their reactions to the life around them and maybe taking it a tad bit to far.
But I'll talk about it like that, not just put them down and deny everything because I am atheist.
So, whats your claim as to the events we see around us? I mean I am ok with "I have no claim", but then running around denying everything takes on a new meaning. Its certainly not science.
Ps, i'll check out your link.
My claim is that life around us is chemical reactions internal to the cell. For me the biosphere is a collection of living entities, but I would not call it literally alive. But that may be due to English not being my natural language.
No, I was making a distinction between Jupiter (a physical system that is not conscious) and an animal (a physical system that is conscious).
No. Qualia are not conscious. People are conscious. Qualia are the elements constituting experience. Compare:
"Atoms are wet."
"No. Water is wet. Atoms are the elements constituting water."
Qualia is not a physical effect. Qualitative experience is an aspect of some physical systems. Compare:
"Angle's are an effect of triangles."
"No. Having angles is an aspect of being triangular."
Qualia are not "things" that we look at. Qualia constitute the process of looking. When we introspect, we try to turn the process of looking into an object that we are looking at, but due to paradoxes of self-reference, the imagination has to kick in and "give us" an "object" to fill in the "hole" at the center of the self-referential process (metaphorically, perhaps, a bit like our brain fills in the "blind spot" in our vision where our optic nerve attaches to the retina). In general, qualia are not objects of experience (since they are the process itself), but when consciousness focuses on its own process of experiencing, it experiences the subjective feelings we call qualia. When it tries to focus on other people's processes of experience, it finds brains, neuroanatomy, abstract principles of electrochemistry, self-organization, etc.
The imagination is key here. But the term "imagination," in this context, can be misleading because we generally associate it with "not real" but, in this context, imagination is precisely what constitutes what we know as "reality". The look and feel of a slab of brain tissue in a lab are just as much products of the imagination as red, or a feeling of pain. Reality can only experience itself as it experiences itself. There is nothing "more real" than what Reality experiences itself as (via the conscious process I'm loosely referring to as "imagination" for lack of a better term at the moment).
I'm probably saying some of this wrong, and will need to backtrack or elaborate to makes sense of some of it, but I'm out time and it's the best I can do at the moment.
All good corrections as I would expect, and this is not a rebuttal, as I'll have to think that through, but what strikes me is either the argument becomes related to the physical, the material and nuts and bolts of matter. Qualia is the name given to what (or so the materialist hypothesis would suggest) atoms and other particles are doing to make the effect work. In which case, qualia is consciousness or specifically an interface between sensory input and the mind processing it (which is also an aspect of consciousness).
Or it is something abstract like as you say the angles of a triangle. Geometrical shapes, like odd, and even are human concepts but based somewhat on what exists in reality (mathematical rules) and qualia is even more an abstract term relating to a (postulated very real and material function of the brain - the mind.
Now, if the mental pixels that enable input to be processed by the mind is Not what qualia is - then we have to find another name for it, I'd thought qualia is what it was and it was consciousness or one function of it.
If not, then I'm hard put to know what this abstract Qualia is or are. It isn't instinct, it isn't the difference between you and me because cars are different but automotive as an abstract term for the difference between the same make of car is pointless. No, Qualia is not the difference between people, nor that we are trapped in our own minds and regarding the input. If Qualia is an abstract term for the particles of the brain not becoming identical with the input information but is having to comprehend it (as best it can) through radar, as it were, that wasn't what I gathered as it was the fact and nature of the sensation -experience, not understanding everything about the waterfall, or not.
It isn't evolved instincts or the transfer of the information to the mind ; it is the presentation of info to the consciousness, or the input in immediately comprehensible sensation or perception form by what is surely the consciousness.
If Qualia is not that, what is it? You know that I don't buy the principle of redness or any other colour, the 'Mary does not have the experience of redness' analogy is about Information, not Qualia. That "Red" is something new is information, not qualia and the qualia of green or indeed monochrome is still qualia.
So if not the nuts and bolts of the function of consciousness to present comprehensible images of sensory input (which is what I'd thought it was) is is a very abstract idea a bit like angles as you say, and I find it impossible to understand what the zombie argument was demonstrating in that respect even if it was logically sound, which it doesn't appear to be.
But ok, let's say it is abstract, a human label shall we say, and of less use than angles which don't exist other than as a human convention of talking about geometry and mathematics. And if you say that the material and physical cannot explain geometry or what Angles actually are in particle physical terms, I'd agree, but dualism there is no more mysterious than the human conventions of language, except that mathematics is more like a physical law than a useful human convention.
Then I can get why the material can never explain the abstract label of a 'aspect' that I don't quite get of a function of consciousness that on all reason IS material/physical in the mechanics and can perhaps be explained in time in term of a complex bio -electric mental function. But I wonder why it took so long to work that out.
A p.s. As I said, I think the key to the understanding (and maybe my misunderstanding) is there. "Qualia are not "things" that we look at. Qualia constitute the the process of looking. When we introspect, we try to turn the process of looking into an object that we are looking at"
That seems to me not it, as when we try to understand the process of mental presentation of sensory input (what I thought we were talking about) we think about the process, But thinking about the process of sensory experience is surely nothing to do with the sensory experience itself. And I don't see what that has to do with a subjective abstraction of the process, or the difference between the brain presenting the experience and then responding to or, indeed, thinking about, how it might work.
That is so obviously no more related to Qualia than a name to denote the difference between breathing and thinking about breathing, that I never bothered to argue about it before now. No, thinking about sensory experience is not It, and you must be trying to point to something else, but damned if I can work out what.
One part of the brain not being part of the brain that created or organises (as I'd suggest in the physical process of sensory perception) seems not only irrelevant (and not needing a name for it) hardly needs physicalism to explain it. Brain surgery can explain it. What is it I'm not getting?
I don't get misled by imagination, of course. But the warning was a needful one. In fact mind experiments which can be valid are essentially imaginary but more to do with memory (of scenarios that one runs through to see if they work) than with just making stuff up which even then ought to be coherent in terms of reality, unless one is doing fairy tales or religion, in which case 'magic' answers all the questions.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-10-2018 at 08:27 AM..
Reason: italicising "Qualia" until I want to scream and need a drink.
a thought is not physical
you can't touch it or see it or weigh it or put it on your table to admire
You can alter them with chemicals, or stimulate them with electrodes.
They are like people on a TV screen. They are not people, but a product of electricity.
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